The best thing about Chrome is that it is fast. The fastest. Evar. How so? To put it simply, the way it treats different tabs in the browser is the way your operating system treats different open applications. Each one runs independently, so the power of your computer—via its dual processors for example—can be divided and used for what God made processors for: speed. And, if you experience a crash on one pesky web page, the whole browser doesn’t have to be closed. You can just close the one hung tab. So, Chrome does for browsing what the Mac OS did for mainstream operating systems.

Think of your Chrome browser pages as application windows. They are nothing like your Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer (Internet Explorer? really? still?) browser pages. That equals stability and speed.

There are lots of other good (and somewhat boring) things I could write about Chrome. But none of them matter, because when it comes to using computers speed trumps everything. I close and never use applications that run slow. And then I delete them.

Firefox is painfully slow compared to Chrome. If that doesn’t change soon, Firefox will bleed users and slowly become obsolete. It’s like the Blackberry versus the iPhone. Crackberry has a keyboard that is actually useful, but it is so much slower than the iPhone and so is in big trouble.

It is more likely that Windows will change its operating system to compete with Chrome—it’s not really a browser issue per se. Chrome reorganizes how we think about browsers versus operating systems, just like Google redefined knowledge. Again, it is about speed. With a fast, reliable browser, cloud computing becomes obvious. That means even hardware will change. The MacAir makes more sense suddenly. The separation between desktop and browser, online and offline, is beginning to dissolve.

Does this prove Google is an evil monster that is taking over the universe not just of browsers but now operating systems? Well, Chrome is built on open source architecture. So once again Google is not selling anything in the out-dated way of explicit and direct product creation and sale. Its mantle of goodness, contained within their unofficial motto of “Do no evil”, remains in place. This is perhaps the most significant feat, at least in a cultural sense. Page and Brin (Google’s daddies) can keep posing around like a couple of affable kids who just stumble into a few billion dollars every year, their Masters of the Universe secret identities intact.

This is because they have set up the perfect win-win situation: If Firefox and Windows improve access and speed across the Internet, Google wins even if Chrome loses the “browser wars.” Chrome is as much about upping the ante and pushing access and useability up, so that more pageviews and ads can hit our eyes and fill Google databases and coffers. So use Chrome, use the soon-to-be sped-up Firefox and revolutionized Windows or any other operating system that has been Chromed into improving access—and Google still comes out ahead.

In other words, win or lose against Firefox et al, the release and speed of Chrome translates into the perfect glory-filled victory for Google.

Chrome Easter Eggs!

Time and space is filled
without disapointment

One should always be concious
of ones space, and others.

Space to stretch
Space between your ears

Space, the constant to fill
Think to much to feel!

To bissy filling
Think thaough compair give take
feel?
Shair thaught felt!

Lest you be cranking up your angry commenting energies to attack the editor, let me clarify: this is a verbatim love letter to me written fifteen years ago by someone I hurt. And remembering it is painful.
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I just had to take a quick break from re-writing the movie Red Dawn (it’s a rush job to shoot it before Patrick Swayze passes away and before everyone has jumped on the Cold War resurgence bandwagon) to talk about my Twitter heroes, the truckers.

Early adoption of GPS was mandatory for truckers given their destination-driven vocation. So they have taken to the location awareness services like Brightkite that we 3G iPhone users are just getting into. The iPhone can pinpoint your exact location and, using Brightkite you can check in at that location. (more…)

It all happened yesterday on my porch as I anxiously watched the street for the brown UPS truck.

Weeks of waiting (all long-term customers were punished by Rogers for their patronage by having to call in their iPhone orders instead of picking one up from the now reasonably stocked stores) culminated with me labouring over a way to sound certain about Derrida’s approach to popular culture analysis called “hauntology.”

The truck pulled up and the delivery person asked if the package was for me. He said “I think it’s a phone or something.”

“A phone!” I said. “This is no phone. I’ve been waiting for this all my life. I gave up a kidney for this thing.”

He handed me my box and I sank softly into tech oblivion. (more…)

I blather on a lot about cultural change and here comes Paris to make my point e

I blather on a lot about cultural change and here comes Paris Hilton to make my point effortlessly. After John McCain’s anti-Obama ad comparing him unflatteringly to the lewdness of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, it was Paris who struck back fatally—not Barack Obama. (more…)

What to wear (Seesmic), what to scorn (GPS, Rogers), and what you’ll read

WEAR THESE:
Seesmic and 12seconds.tv
Video interaction isn’t for everyone but it is desperately fashionable to have at least tried it. Seesmic is video conversation. It is a small but now fairly well-formed community that includes every age and ability from peepaws to fidgets, hackers to luddites. Deepak Chopra and Harrison Ford have both made appearances so it must be important. I only use it with my dog Jesus as my avatar. Magicalpowermako (a masterful Seesmic poster) uses disturbing puppets. So, grab your kitty or your toilet and join the debate about shirtless posting.

12seconds is like Seesmic with a 12 second time limit. I prefer these short bursts because poorly-lit talking heads reminds me of my childhood without cable TV. It has a teeny-weeny user base so it is very easy to join 12seconds and make friends and become a top poster.

Indenti.ca
The biggest critique of Twitter it that it does not follow the Open Micro Blogging protocol. You know, Twitter is down with THE MAN. Here comes sweet little Canadian Identi.ca to the rescue. Open source and portable it is the first Twitter clone to actually do something Twitter can’t. (more…)

Talking to people who have no knowledge of and/or hostility towards socialnets and cloud computing I feel like I did when I was hiding by a sewage lagoon as a kid to avoid mulletted Tammy Gough who promised to break my neck because of my Smart Set peach satin pirate shirt, chicken legs and granny boots.

There is no utterable translation of my position. Despite being physically proximal our cultures seem uncomfortably divergent. I’ve learned, thanks to the Goughster and her threats, to pass. To engage in idle chitchat about raccoons ripping apart my roof and lawn maintenance. To shut my mouth when someone asks what the hell is the big deal about iPhones or, nostalgic yearnings for the good old days when kids had attention spans and thinner bodies because they never had any Internet.

In my head I scream (and later Tweet): would they lament the invention of the printing press in the same way? (more…)

Calacanis, netlebrity and Maholo search founder/spammer, has quit blogging.

Presenting: The Hate Crown. on 12seconds.tv

Today the blogosphere is so charged, so polarized, and so filled with haters hating that it’s simply not worth it. I’d rather watch from the sidelines and be involved in a smaller, more personal, conversation.

Jason McCabe Calacanis, July 11th 2008

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After frenzied outcries from Canadians all week because of Rogers’ iPhone plan which prevents us from participating in a communication revolution by not offering unlimited data at any price—Rogers has caved. (more…)

To all those who doubted it was possible: I did it! I was offline for one whole week!

My Offline Activities:

I read the print version of The Wall Street Journal (I found it discarded in the street).

I stood under the 118 degree Fahrenheit daytime sun in Death Valley for two whole minutes before diving back into my idling Prius.

I cleansed my clothes of filth in the machines of the Hollywood Madam, Heidi Fleiss, at Dirty Laundry in Pahrump, Nevada.

I must confess that near the beginning of the week I fell off the wagon and went online in a Westwood Cafe. After a guilty couple minutes I looked up and sitting across from me eating panini and sipping Orangina was Laurence Fishburne. (more…)

The Year 2015:
Kid: People used to actually pay for music?

Old person/me: Yes. Yes they did.

Kid: Were you just stupid?

Old person/me: No! We were held hostage by inefficient systems of getting the music to us. We had to go outside, drive far and buy discs and plastic never knowing what we would find or how much we would have to pay.

Kid: The olden days sure sucked

Present Day:

On Thursday June 12, Canada’s Digital Milliennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Bill C-61 was barfed out of generic politician Jim Prentice’s mouth. It was simultaneously vomit and the sputum of an industry that voraciously profited from inefficient music delivery systems to become the bloated, pussy mess it is today. (more…)

Equal amounts of laughter and applause at the night’s entertainment were followed by genuine conversation. Between my twitters, of course (twot is my Twitter name):

twot Arriving fashionably late! about 4 hours ago from txt

I even got the opportunity to talk tech with Don Gillmor who simultaneously visited and posted to our blogs for the first time ever this week. I couldn’t believe it! He had never read any of his Walrus articles online. But then he couldn’t believe I don’t read print magazines or newspapers. His curiosity and my verbosity allowed us to move beyond disbelief. (more…)

Brief history of the internets: October 29, 1969: White American guy Leonard Kleinrock sent the first data online over

Brief history of the internets:

October 29, 1969: White American guy Leonard Kleinrock sent the first data online over arpanet. The white people needed more sneaky military tricks and this was cutting edge stuff.

Web 1.0: More and more American white guys get their rocks off developing esoteric languages to exchange porn and escape into fantasy worlds where they weren’t only white but powerful and rich.

Web 2.0: These same white guys don’t have to play games any more (but they do!), their fantasies having become reality. You see, a bunch of rich white guys begin to agree that their esoteric work is going to change the world. All the white guys in the world start piling on! Some white girls do too, as well as a few privileged others.

Web 3.0: A black guy gets elected president. Then a black woman (Oprah, naturally). Black people take over the internets despite the seeming insurmountability of centuries of economic and cultural violence against them. They are able to do this because they make sick music videos.

If you want to get more detail on all the activities of these white guys, the latest issue of white magazine Vanity Fair gets into more white facts as told by various important white guys. But my version gets to the meat of the matter.

Web 3.0 is indeed the semantic web—but not the way us white people thought. It’s about word meaning alright. But not about another round of esoteric languages that cull the connotative and contextualized meaning of words. Nope. It is about changing the meaning of whiteness from normal to political. From average to privileged.

The semantic web was crowned recently on Perez Hilton after he posted the new Nas video: Be A N-word Too. It garnered this comment:

You usually post alot of BS we indulge on on a daily basis about who’s wearing what and how many pounds and what a mess, d list… BLAH BLAH BLAH… BUT WHEN YOU POST REAL MUSIC, REAL PEOPLE, REAL NEWS, I REALIZE YOU’RE NOT JUST A GOSSIP BLOGGER… YOU’RE INNOVATIVE!!! Who else would post this video??? how else would I have seen it? NO television network would have posted it and nowhere would we have found it without being censored… SO YOU KNOW WHAT PEREZ… F*CK YOUR HATERS, SPOILED “STARS”, UNTALENTED BITCHES (avril jijiji), AND KEEP ON SPILING THEIR MESS OF LIVES SO YOU CAN ENTERTAIN US ****AND**** THANK YOU FOR ENLIGHTNING ME WITH THIS MUSIC… I WAS NEVER A FAN UNTIL TODAY! XOXO

This music video is what the internets will be for. It is probably beyond our imaginations right now. Revelatory cultural productions that come contained in previously unbroadcasted forms. Boundaries are exceeded. Failure of imagination will cause many to belittle and condemn the work. Just like no one in 1849 could imagine a human would fly from New York to Los Angeles. There were cartoons about how silly it would be for a human to fly across the continent.

Nas is being overtly political—but he has to be. Take your Scoble, your Arrington and even the little Kevin Rose. They are the normal. Our culture’s natural. So they can pass as apolitical. Why would they need to bring politics up when the system’s milk nurtures and sustains their delectable plumpness? White capitalist patriarchy is only a political issue to those who aren’t the norm. Like Nas and his N-word.

There are no apolitical spaces, only tacit functional denial. There are no dirty words, only dirty contexts. Across the board social regulation of all kinds services the interests of the white people who invented the N-word word to rationalize past violence and, in that grand old tradition, reinvent new violence by cross-contextual bans on its use in public broadcasts.

Nas is danceable enlightenment. His is the new semantic language. He is the vanguard of Web 3.0.

P.S. I will be in attendance at Luminato’s “The Dark City”, tonight at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre in Toronto. If you see me at the show then say hi. I’m told tickets are still available at the door—walrusmagazine.com/events

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicked off yesterday so the Internet memes are abuzz with iPorn. Every time Steve Job’s talks, tech bloggers, like me, are thrilled to blog about it. It turns each of us into ads for Apple and what is worse many of us are not even real shills because we don’t get any payment for our work for them. (more…)

So you’ve posted your profile on a dating site hoping to developing a relationship with someone will add to your already thrilling life. And some unappealing people have messaged you. Now what?

WARNING: What I write here might lead to irrevocable changes in your life. I am the online dating success story, having mined and plucked the Internet dating vine of its most fantastic fruit. Soulmate type stuff. I will now share my technique. (more…)